Tag Archive: The American Interest

” Defenders of the administration will point to this Times story as partially exonerating White House officials from some of the charges leveled against them. At least they tried to save Ambassador Stevens and his team.”

” As officials in the White House and Pentagon scrambled to respond to the torrent of reports pouring out from Libya — with Mr. Stevens missing and officials worried that he might have been taken hostage — they took the extraordinary step of sending elite Delta Force commandos, with their own helicopters and ground vehicles, from their base at Fort Bragg, N.C., to Sicily. Those troops also arrived too late.”

” Ambassador Stevens didn’t die because the White House had a bad night. He died because the White House has bungled North Africa.”

” Nothing is more pointless or more irresistible than to try to predict the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election. It’s pointless both because so many resources and so much energy has been spent on the forecasting effort up until now and because in just a few days the results of the 2012 election will be universally known. But it’s irresistible because human beings are hardwired to try to figure out the future and because the contest is so dramatic and consuming.

For what it’s worth, at Via Meadia we stand pretty much where we’ve stood for the last year: the President has a slight edge in a close race. Governor Romney foiled the President’s effort to marginalize his candidacy and brand him as a radical by solid performances in the debates and overall an impressive fall campaign, but his momentum in the polls never quite gave him both the national and swing state edge he needed to become the frontrunner. ”

” The only thing holding us back from predicting an Obama win Tuesday is this prediction of a Romney win by Michael Barone. Barone is without a doubt one of the deepest students alive of American electoral politics and his encyclopedic knowledge of local politics in major states plus his level headed judgment are particularly valuable when, as now, the polls are so close. Barone is a conservative thinker but he isn’t a cheerleader. He wouldn’t make this call if he didn’t believe it. “

“The office of the Director of National Intelligence is both confirming that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi was deliberately planned in advance and excusing the White House for getting the story wrong. Officials are trying to determine if a mysterious, little known organization called “Al-Qaeda” had something to do with the attack. This doesn’t seem likely, as Al-Qaeda was reported dead or at least in what former Vice President Cheney would have called its “death throes” in Pakistan last spring, but you never know.”

“The Chicago teachers’ strike and the coming pension crisis has even progressives worried that public-sector employee costs are bankrupting the city: Matt Yglesias is arguing that the teachers’ union’s proposal to raise taxes to pay for their pension programs may divert funds from more important programs:”

” Reutersreports that the death toll in a new Congo ebola outbreak is up to 31. New cases are still turning up and there’s real possibility this could spread.

99 times out of 100, it won’t. Ebola kills very quickly; people sick with it don’t usually travel much and these outbreaks tend to burn themselves out very quickly. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know how seriously to take these warnings. Fortunately for the rest of us, the outbreaks so far have generally taken place in the boondocks among people who don’t ride airplanes or drive taxis”

“Don’t tell Al Gore, but Russia and China are leading the charge to take custody of the internet from a handful of U.S.-based NGOs and give it to the UN.”

The makings of disaster …

“The UN, which has a deplorable record when it comes to human rights and basic freedoms, wants control over the most important communications tool in the world? The same UN that elected Iran to the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference,appointed a Libyan representative to lead the Human Rights Commission, named Robert Mugabe its Special Tourism Envoy, and awarded a prize funded by money stolen from Equatorial Guineans by their brutal dictator? Many UN members would like nothing better than to censor or ban the irritating news stories that can so swiftly spread across the web.”

By all means , let’s give control of humanity’s best shot at liberty to the despots and terrorists that control the cesspit that is the UN .